East of the Andes

:: Linguistic fieldwork in northern Peru :: Simon E. Overall ::

[ecuadorlife]

Cute Leafhopper nymph from the Amazon rainforest of Ecuador

[linguisten]

Four Things That Happen When a Language Dies

This World Mother Language Day, read about why many say we should be fighting to preserve linguistic diversity

[linguist-breakaribecca]

As Nancy Rivenburgh wrote for the International Association of Conference Interpreters, what’s happening with today’s language loss is actually quite different from anything that happened before. Languages in the past disappeared and were born anew, she writes, but “they did so in a state of what linguists call ‘linguistic equilibrium.’ In the last 500 years, however, the equilibrium that characterized much of human history is now gone. And the world’s dominant languages—or what are often called ‘metropolitan’ languages—are all now rapidly expanding at the expense of ‘peripheral’ indigenous languages. Those peripheral languages are not being replaced.”

That means that out of the around 7000 languages that most reputable sources estimate are spoken globally, only the top 100 are widely spoken. And it isn’t just our understanding of the human mind that’s impaired, she writes. In many places, indigenous languages and their speakers are rich sources of information about the world around them and the plants and animals in the area where they live. In a time of mass extinction, that knowledge is especially precious.

[eastoftheandes]

What made this ancient society sacrifice its own children?

Some 500 years ago, the Chimú in what is now Peru ritually killed hundreds of their young in the largest mass child sacrifice events known in world history. Now archaeologists are trying to understand why.

Not actually East of the Andes, but an interesting story from the zone where crossing the Andes is easiest.

[eastoftheandes]

Australia: Temper and Bias

The deputy leader of the Liberal Party, Julie Bishop, said in 2017 that Aboriginal children should not be taught their own culture and language because it would retard them. Her fellow ministers and advisers weighed in with the opinion that Aboriginal culture was flawed because we hadn’t invented the wheel or done anything useful with the land. Some went so far as to say child abuse was one of our cultural traits. There is nothing postcolonial about Australia. It still has a Raj mentality and a vindictive adherence to colonial myth. Our country has never really investigated the colonial legacy, …

I don’t mean to berate but the hour is late. Aboriginal health and education continue to fall far below the national average and the incarceration rate of Aboriginal Australians should be the shame of the nation instead of a prickly nuisance. Australia seems to wash its hands of this state of affairs, never seeming to wonder how dispossession and the failure of the nation to believe our pre-colonial and postcolonial histories works on the psyche of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people alike.

[eastoftheandes]

Peru’s oldest and largest Amazonian oil field poised for clean up

Plan would address decades of pollution in areas occupied by indigenous groups.

Nearly half a century after poorly regulated oil producers began dumping billions of litres of wastewater and other toxic substances into the rivers and tropical forests of northern Peru, the government is taking its first steps towards cleaning up the damage in the country’s oldest and largest Amazonian oil field.

[thelanguagebro]

Linguistics started when panini’s mom told him to watch his language and he took it way too far

[palabraspoeticas]

[linguisten]

The genius of Australian Indigenous Languages, and why they are important for all of us

Australia’s Indigenous languages exhibit many interesting and unique properties that have contributed greatly to our understanding of how human beings process and perceive the world around them. However, much of this knowledge has remained within the purview of language scientists, and the broader Australian community still has little awareness of how fascinating Australian Indigenous languages are, and what they teach us about the nature of language more broadly.

In this inaugural professorial lecture, Professor Rachel Nordlinger discusses some of her favourite features of these languages – ranging from unusual grammatical properties, to intriguing word meanings, to the questions they raise about how languages are learned and processed. In doing so, Professor Nordlinger will present the true genius of these languages, and argues that, as well as being important to the communities who speak and treasure them, they should be valued by all of us who are interested in what it is to be human.

Rachel Nordlinger is Director of the Research Unit for Indigenous Language, in the School of Languages and Linguistics and a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, Faculty of Arts. This is her inaugural professorial lecture.

[eastoftheandes]

El objetivo de la Asociación Solinia es la conservación y la protección del medio ambiente y de los animales en la Amazonia Peruana, especialmente los Delfines del Río, el bufeo colorado (Inia geoffrensis) y el bufeo negro (Sotalia fluviatilis).

https://www.facebook.com/AsociacionSolinia/

[specgram]

“Words differently arranged have a different meaning, and meanings differently arranged have a different effect. ”

—Blaise Pascal

[allthingslinguistic]

It’s easy to assume that sequences of cartoon-style images are universally understandable. The Visual Linguist summarizes a 1978 study “Communicating with Pictures in Nepal” by Fussell and Haaland which shows that people who don’t have exposure to this style of communication do not make the same assumptions about it as people who do. 

They tested photos, “blackout” photos with backgrounds omitted, highly detailed line drawings, semi-detailed line drawings with no shading, silhouettes, and cartoony schematic figures. They found that the content of different visual styles were recognized at very different proportions. People “accurately” recognized the content of cartoony (stick figure-esque) styles the worst (49%), while blockout photos without backgrounds (67%) and highly detailed line drawings (79%) were the best. […] 

It’s worth noting that when looking at the images in the paper, they did not seem overly “poorly drawn” or ambiguous, as the image above shows. By American standards, they were fairly straightforward and drawn in a simple but clear manner. So, it’s not just that they were “bad drawings.”

Sequences of images fared no better. A two-image comparison of a mother bottle-feeding vs. breast feeding children was only recognized by 19% as being about bottle feeding at all, while only 3% recognized that the image pair was making a comparison.

They also had no assumptions about a left to right (or reversed) reading order, with less than 50% going in this intended order. With a 3-image sequence, some even started in the middle. Even with those who read them in order, most did not understand the connections between images.  The authors note that individuals’ degree of literacy was highly predictive of linear reading orders (though it’s unknown whether they could also understand those connections).

Read the whole post. 

There’s a note in the comments that it’s quite possible that things may have changed for this particular group of people since 1978 when the study was conducted, but that the point about not assuming that pictures are universally understandable is still useful. 

[eastoftheandes]

Sentimentality, we tend to think, is an exaggerated emotional attachment to something. It is exaggerated because it does not reflect the value of its object. The late philosopher G A Cohen describes a well-worn, 46-year-old eraser that he bought when he first became a lecturer, and that he would ‘hate to lose’. We all treasure such things – a decades-old rubber, our children’s drawings, a long-expired train ticket from a trip to see the one we love – that are worthless to other people. If the value of minority languages is mainly sentimental, it is comparable to the value that Cohen placed on his old eraser. It would be cruel to destroy it deliberately, yet it would be unreasonable for him to expect society to invest significant resources preserving it. The same might be true of minority languages: their value to some just doesn’t warrant the society-wide effort required to preserve them.

The death of languages by Rebecca Roache

[eastoftheandes]

For the first time in the history of Peru, two indigenous communities have been officially accredited as Forest Monitors by the State. As a result of the cutting edge monitoring work carried out by the indigenous communities of Patria Nueva and Nueva Saposoa in Ucayali, the villages have completely eliminated deforestation caused by coca growers, logging and other illegal activities in their ancestral land.

[eastoftheandes]

“El Estado declaró hoy como Patrimonio Cultural de la Nación a los conocimientos, saberes y prácticas del pueblo Awajún asociados a la producción de cerámica, ante el trascendente valor artístico y cultural de su evolutiva y preponderante trayectoria.” (via www.caaap.org.pe)

[eastoftheandes]

Tomatillo Fossils, 52 Million Years Old, Are Discovered in Patagonia

[eastoftheandes]

This beautiful photo of the Río Yuracyacu, in San Martín, Peru, is from the Cultura Awajún facebook page.

[eartharchives]

The Nearly Magical Properties of Fig Trees

They can help us mitigate and adapt to climate change - and that's just the beginning